


These Fragments Shored Against My Ruins

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Action, Drama, Gen, Gen Fic, Original Character Death(s), Sci-Fi Violence, Suspense, Torture, violent imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-17
Updated: 2011-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:48:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When McCoy goes missing on an emergency mission, the Enterprise searches for clues to his disappearance and encounters a dangerous race.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Fragments Shored Against My Ruins

**Author's Note:**

> My part of this year’s [](http://trekreversebang.livejournal.com/profile)[**trekreversebang**](http://trekreversebang.livejournal.com/), written for [](http://scatter-muse.livejournal.com/profile)[**scatter_muse**](http://scatter-muse.livejournal.com/)’s badass art, which will be linked below. I admit I couldn’t resist the chance to write for the art, since I knew exactly what I wanted to write when I saw it the first time. (I also was waiting on the claims page to _make sure_ I got the chance to do this. This is pretty much exactly what I had in mind when I was doing that. Thanks to [](http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/profile)[](http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/)**_samalander** , who let me bounce ideas off of her (and then promptly forget them), and everyone who let me flail around madly when it was still in the early planning stages.

*

McCoy wakes to silence.

The klaxon that had been shrieking before impact is suspiciously quiet, and when he rolls himself over and pushes himself up, there’s not even the occasional chirp from the Galileo’s shipboard computer to warn him that they’re on auxiliary power. There’s a dried crust of his iron blood on his cheek and his shirt is ripped from his shoulder down to his elbow, which he discovers very quickly when his right arm gives under the slightest hint of weight. McCoy fumbles for the chair with his left hand and pulls himself up toward the console, which is riddled with cracks like spiderwebs across the whole surface of the screen.

“Computer,” he croaks and barely recognizes his own voice. The computer gives a half-hearted crackle of life and glows to life. It’s this, the cold metal under his fingertips and the flickering, smashed screen, that forces him to realize how far from home he is; how utterly helpless and alone. “Computer, begin transmitting distress signal. Federation frequencies first.” McCoy pushes the command out with more force than he expects to summon, but it tires him quickly. Even among the fog of panic that’s setting in rapidly, clouding out rational thought, McCoy thinks that the impact may have jarred his life signs implant, or that he might be too far beyond its capability to transmit back to the _Enterprise._

The computer only flickers its luminescence more dimly than before, but it’s good enough. McCoy can see that it’s begun the transmission, though on all frequencies, not simply the one designated for Federation emergencies.

“Conserve power,” he orders and turns away from the console, feeling more as if it’s a reminder to himself than a command for the computer. He stumbles out of the wreckage of the Galileo and finds his datapadd first, cushioned in a patch of cushy vegetation where it must have been haphazardly thrown from the ship. The damage is worse than he’d ever hope to fix, even if he had a month. Maybe even if he had a year. McCoy tosses his phaser toward the shuttle and picks up the PADD, wiping off a thin layer of alien dew from the screen.

His mission goals are the first screen that comes up when he turns it on, relying on his left hand while gingerly cradling his right as he sinks down into the plant life. The Enterprise dropped a scouting mission on Betelgeuse 17-B a week before to evaluate the planet’s potential as a Federation farming planet, and returned a full two weeks early when one of their security officers had fallen ill. It had seemed like a relatively safe part of the system, of course, or none of them would have gone.

No, McCoy thinks and flips through the reports, shaking his head because that doesn’t seem right. The team that landed here before, _they_ had made it through safely and had been in regular contact. It _was_ safe, until the subspace disturbance that knocked the Galileo off course. McCoy nearly flunked his flight courses, but he knows what the pull of a gravity well feels like after escaping orbit a few dozen times. He’s not even sure Sulu would have done much better when the thrusters burned out, and even now, looking at the star maps Chekov loaded onto his datapadd before he left the Enterprise, McCoy can’t find a hint of a mass in the system that would have thrown him off the way he was and sent him in a freefall toward the planet.

“Mission Log,” he sighs at his PADD, turning on the recording function. “Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy, Chief Medical Officer of the _Enterprise._ Stardate…” He pauses to look at the date and time and swears quietly when he realizes that he’s been out for hours. “Stardate 2260.33, 1742 ship’s time. I’ve been unconscious for the last couple hours, woke up on Betelgeuse 17-B, if this technology hasn’t gotten fried in the crash. I was en route to rendezvous with Ensign Rodriguez, Crewman Talla, and Crewman Depaul, to treat Depaul’s unknown infection when the shuttle’s navigation systems went haywire, like there was some kind of gravitational…”

A cracking sound in the undergrowth nearby stops him mid-sentence, and McCoy jerks his head up toward the sound. He’s barely on his feet when three figures come into view, vaguely humanoid from this distance. He feels a rush of relief, warm and calming until he takes a step toward the shadows and sees them clearer. Their skin is a drab grey, and there’s something cold about them that strikes him before he even sees the wiring sticking haphazardly out from one of their temples. He’d even think them human if it weren’t for the _wrongness_ of it, except…

Except there is something familiar about the trio. Familiar, and wrong, but something falls into place and he something about the figure to the left, with a faintly feminine figure and a pair of antennae, sets his mind off like a pistol shot.

“Crewman Talla?” he says quietly, and all three figures fixate on him. McCoy’s blood runs cold, draining out what relief was left in him when they turn to him and march briskly through the undergrowth. Whatever was wrong with Depaul before seems not to be ailing him anymore, McCoy thinks wryly. “What the hell?”

There’s a flash of movement from them, in eerie unison, and McCoy reacts to the phaser rifles before he fully understands that there are three of them, and all of them are pointed at him, and it’s definitely not Federation technology. He drops like a stone and rolls through the vegetation, swearing liberally through an animal yell of pain that’s his own, and fumbling for the phaser he dropped by the shuttle only moments before. His right arm is useless, sending shots of pain through his shoulder, but he swings around and points the phaser at the approaching creatures—he won’t allow himself to think of them as the crewmen he was supposed to find and treat—and hesitates, his finger held perfectly in place before firing.

Talla—the thing that _looks_ like Talla, or was her—fires first, and McCoy reacts instinctively, flipping the phaser to stun and firing at each of them. The first two shots go wild, and the third hits Depaul in the chest, blasting him back. Depaul rises without hesitating, muttering something McCoy can’t fully understand in unison with the other two when they drop their rifles and lift their hands, no more than a meter from him.

“No,” McCoy says hoarsely as the metal tubules shooting from Talla’s hand punch through his outstretched hand, knocking the phaser aside as easily as a toy, and pierce into his neck. His vision flickers to black, the vision of Depaul, Rodriguez, and Talla standing over him fading out. All he can feel is his shattered arm and a steady pulse of blood from his hand, more acutely painful than any of his other compounding wounds. McCoy opens his mouth to say something, but the only thing that comes is a bubble of blood, which is burst by another tubule that snakes down his throat—Depaul’s, he somehow knows with unsettling certainty and distance, as if this is happening somewhere far away from him.

The last thing McCoy is aware of before he releases his grip on consciousness is their hands on him, lifting him from the ground, and their voices ringing through his emptying mind.

“Resistance is futile.”

*

“Captain.”

Kirk swivels his head to look away from the flat viewscreen and over his shoulder, where Spock is standing impassively with his hands folded behind his back. When Kirk nods to him, Spock steps forward and holds out a datapadd to him, which Kirk doesn’t reach for immediately.

“Report,” he says firmly, and exchanges an uneasy look with Spock, who looks away and down to the PADD in his hand.

“Mr. Chekov reports that they have located both the last apparent base camp for the scouting team, and the crash site of the Galileo.” His thumb pushes the image to the next screen, displaying a map of the terrain on Betelgeuse 17-B. Kirk finally takes it and stares at it, the two dots marked on the map.

“Any sign of the crewmen, or Doctor McCoy?”

“None, sir.” There’s a long pause. Kirk looks up from the map and frowns at Spock, who meets his stare evenly. “There is also the matter of the disturbance we tracked near the planet. My own analysis of subspace surrounding the area suggests some sort of alien warp trails very recently. I am conducting further analysis of the origin of these trails, and expect to have a report before 2100. Captain, it is very… peculiar.”

Kirk’s face hardens, and he sets the datapadd on the edge of the desk. It’s been three days since McCoy’s disappearance, apparently from crash landing, and Kirk hasn’t slept more than an hour or two at a time since then. McCoy’s mission had been straightforward, uncomplicated, and apparently unrelated to the nearby anomaly which Kirk had ordered the Enterprise to pursue. If Kirk has learned anything over the last few years of his command, it’s that nothing is quite what it seems, and even if something seems unrelated, that isn’t necessarily how it really is. Another captain—Pike, maybe—would have recognized the danger and never let his CMO off the _Enterprise._

Kirk ignores the rest of Spock’s explanation. “How recently? Is it possible the source of those warp trails is responsible for Doctor McCoy’s disappearance?”

“And the lack of communication from our landing party,” Spock adds for him. Kirk looks away and stares at the corner of his desk. “It has been seventy-six hours since the doctor’s disappearance.”

“I know.” Kirk tries to blunt the edge in his voice, but bitterness seeps through. “Keep studying those trails you found. Ask Mr. Chekov and Mr. Sulu to trace their patterns and try to establish their trajectory and destination. Have Scotty look at those readings of yours, too. I want to know what happened to McCoy and the Galileo by morning.”

“Yes, Captain.” Spock turns away passively and rests his hand on the door console. “Is there anything else?”

A beat of silence passes between them, and Spock looks over his shoulder to meet Kirk’s eyes. They exchange a dark look before Kirk turns back toward his console, forcing a grim smile on his mouth. “Yeah. Try to get some rest tonight,” he orders, feeling more like it’s a brutal reminder to himself, but he can’t allow himself to sleep while this is still going on. The door closes with a whoosh behind Spock, leaving Kirk along with his thoughts, staring out at the blanket of dark space dotted with stars outside the window of his ready room.

There’s no sign of McCoy in the empty blackness, nor any brilliant epiphany that strikes him by staring into it. Not like before. Kirk lifts his datapadd from the desk and scans each of the screens one more time, reflecting the same data he’s had since McCoy went missing. He wants his best friend there with him; his companion and his confidante. If anyone else were missing, McCoy would be the one Kirk would visit with his nagging self-doubts. This pacing around the ship isn’t what he’s good at.

Kirk leans over his console and taps in the code to contact Spock. His first officer answers in the cool, even tones that Kirk has come to rely on over the course of this mission for the stability McCoy can’t provide.

“Prepare another landing party, Spock,” he says firmly. “I want you to stay on board and study those warp trails, but I need to find out what happened on that planet.”

*

It takes a full six hours to assemble an away team and wait for daylight in the section of the planet they’re beaming to. Kirk sleeps lightly and wakes after only a few hours of sleep. The rest of his time is spent reviewing Spock’s findings on the mysterious warp trails. Finally, he stands and walks leadenly to the transport room, where the away team is standing ready for him. There are five of them—three security officers, a scouting ensign, and a lieutenant from astrophysics who looks bewildered. He deliberately left a medic off the team, though Crewman Odilla is a certified emergency medic, because he can’t risk losing more of his medical team.

“Captain,” Spock says from the transport console, his fingers resting on the edge of it with an edge of tension on his typically immovable countenance. “The team is prepared for landing, at your word.”

“We’re ready,” Kirk announces firmly and stands beside the console with him, watching the security officers scramble onto the transport pad. When he’s close enough for Spock’s earshot, he lowers his voice to a quiet, conversational hum, “Spock, while we’re down there, I want you to work on studying those warp trails with Scotty.”

“We’ve identified that the source is—”

“I read the report,” Kirk continues urgently, patting the metal of the console. “And I want you to find out where they went, how many of them there are, and how we can find them.”

“Mr. Chekov and Mr. Sulu were unsuccessful in tracing them before.” Spock looks uncomfortable, as if he knows that Kirk is going to ask him to do it anyway. He does, of course.

“That was before we knew anything about them,” he says pointedly, avoiding looking over to the away team. He doesn’t want to worry them by talking frankly like this in front of them. “Keep working at it, all four of you.” There’s silence in the transport room for a second before Spock nods woodenly and Kirk jogs up onto the transport platform, checking his phaser to make sure it’s properly holstered before he straightens.

“Ready for transport, Mr. Spock.”

The room disintegrates around him when Spock enters the codes into the console in front of him, and lifts his hand in a Vulcan salute that twists Kirk’s stomach. When the team rematerializes, Kirk pauses to look around immediately. The forest around them is still.

“Fan out, but stay close. Keep in sight of someone else at all times,” he orders and draws his phaser and kicks at the ground. Solid, and it betrays nothing of what’s happened to his crew, or to McCoy.

“We’re half a mile from the Galileo’s crash site,” one of ensigns at his elbow announces. Ensign Cassidy, he recalls suddenly, and that Caroline Cassidy is one of the expeditionary scouts he passed over for assignment to this planet to start with. Kirk’s blood cools, but he looks over at her tricorder and nods.

“Lead us there first. We’ll track down the first team’s camp after we see if there’s anything there.”

Ensign Cassidy follows the signal, periodically checking her maps, while the rest of the team circles around them. The astrophysicist follows alongside them, uncomfortable and giving every outstretched branch of a tree wide berth. Kirk would laugh, but even walking trees is too seriously plausible for him right now, and he understands that the guy is unnerved.

“Lieutenant Torthal,” he says, walking companionably with him while Cassidy ducks past another towering tree trunk. “You’re looking uncomfortable.”

“Begging your pardon, Captain,” Torthal says, just a hair above a whisper, “I’m not very comfortable right now.” He looks away nervously, and then back at Kirk, realizing that he isn’t showing proper respect. “Crewman Talla was…”

“I see.” Kirk understands and faces the back of Cassidy’s head, watching her ponytail swing when she steps over a large branch. He follows suit and doesn’t pursue the conversation any more. Relationships between crew members are common enough that most captains overlook it on the exploratory missions. Space is dark, dangerous, and lonely. McCoy was more right than Kirk knew at the time when they met. McCoy had known, though, and Kirk feels guilty for the self-indulgent thought he’d allowed himself for years, that if it was all those things, then he would keep them from McCoy, just to keep him around. It was selfish, and arrogant, and this is a right fulfillment of McCoy’s darkest fears. Before he can chasten himself further, his thoughts are interrupted by a sharp yell ahead.

“There it is!”

He looks up and sees his security detail stopped at the edge of a burnt out clearing. The tops of the tree tops are seared off and the whole area smells strongly of burning and the weeping sap from the trees.

“Look for Doctor McCoy,” he orders, though he’s certain he won’t find him here. McCoy could survive this, he knows just by looking at the angle of the crash. McCoy _did_ survive this. Kirk picks his way through the charred stumps and circles around the Galileo, touching his hand to the hull of the shuttlecraft.

“Where the hell are you, Bones?” he murmurs, and Torthal yelps, darting toward him.

“Don’t touch it, Captain!” he says, waving his own tricorder at him. “Radiation levels are unusually high here. The warp core may have been breached in the crash.”

Of course. Kirk withdraws his hand immediately and steps away. “We’ll work quickly, then. Tell Odilla to give everyone a shot from his medical pack.” Torthal disappears around the Galileo and Kirk takes a few cautious steps toward the rear of the craft, looking for the exit McCoy must have taken. There’s a tear in the hull, but it’s not large enough for a man to slip through, so Kirk keeps moving until he finds the rear open and a patterned drip of red, iron blood in the vegetation around it. Slowly, he pivots around and looks at the patterns of the blood. The tell-tale marks of phaser fire are more obvious than the crushed undergrowth, but Kirk crouches down and examines the evidence of a struggle. He can’t prevent a grim smile, thinking of McCoy fighting like hell, but it disappears immediately when he sees a datapadd a few meters away.

There’s a minor crack in the casing, probably from the crash, and there are bloodied fingerprints on the screen where McCoy must have been using it. Kirk examines it for a few seconds before he recognizes the blinking red light in the corner is the recording function still running. He presses his lips together tightly and stops the recording, tapping in a few commands to access the beginning of the recording. The rest of the away team gathers closer to him, but Kirk holds up a hand to silence them when he begins to play it back.

McCoy’s battered face appears on the screen and his voice comes out loudly. Kirk can immediately recognize the hoarse weakness in his voice, and he’s silently identifying his injuries. The bruises on his forehead are bad news, and McCoy’s irises look a little blown in the recording. The soft wheeze at the end of his words, the tight press of his lips between breaths concealing his gritted teeth, those are his tells. He’s in pain, probably broken a few bones, but Kirk isn’t a doctor, just getting to be an expert on his own injuries.

Kirk snaps back to attention when McCoy’s face changes on the screen, and he sees a long flash of three greyish figures through his eyes for a moment before the PADD goes flying, landing with the screen toward the sky when McCoy flings it away. Kirk hears phaser fire, and McCoy’s strangled screams, and tells himself that it’s his duty as captain, as McCoy’s _friend_ , to listen to it.

“What the hell is that?” Cassidy says sharply, recoiling from the datapadd. Torthal looks ill, but Kirk listens to the far-off sounds of something he can’t understand happening to McCoy, then the cold voices of the trio.

“We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

When McCoy goes silent in the recording, Kirk silences the team again when they shift in horror, exchanging dark expressions, and hears his three attackers speaking.

“Pick him up,” one orders with a vaguely feminine lilt to its voice. “The Queen requires him immediately.”

Torthal makes a strangled noise in his throat and stumbles toward Kirk, who stops himself short of reprimanding him when he sees his eyes. “Let me see that,” he whispers in the same, choked sound, and takes the datapadd from Kirk, who surrenders it hesitantly. His hands brush the screen, and Kirk sees McCoy’s face again, then the grey figures. Torthal stabs his finger down and stops the recording, staring.

“Captain,” he breathes, dragging his thumb down one image. The halted recording allows Kirk to see them more clearly, and he recognizes Rodriguez first, before he sees the antennae on the female figure, who must have been the speaker at the end. “Captain,” Torthal repeats, “it’s Crewman Talla.”

Kirk takes back the PADD and looks at the rest of the team, who has stepped clear of them, and is watching with pale faces. “Nguyen, I want you to record evidence. I’m keeping Doctor McCoy’s datapadd, but everything else, his phaser, evidence of the struggle, even bootprints from those—from the others, I want all of it. Odilla, check the interior of the Galileo with Torthal. Nkrumah, contact the Enterprise and arrange for beam-up. Cassidy, come with me.”

The team hesitates for only a second, and the each of them begin moving quickly. Cassidy tucks her tricorder under her arm and retreats away with Kirk, her mouth tight.

“What can I help with, Captain?”

He hands her the datapadd again and shows her the still image of Depaul, Rodriguez, and Talla. “Doctor McCoy was sent here to deal with a virus among the first away team. Does this look like any virus you’ve seen before?”

Her dark eyes flash over the screen, and then she looks back up at Kirk and shakes her head. “No, Captain, but I’m not—”

“You’re not a medic, I know,” he sighs and looks at it again. “Those are definitely the crewmembers McCoy was meant to rendezvous with when he landed. McCoy said something about a gravity well, and then…” Kirk rubs his forehead, and Cassidy shakes her head firmly.

“I’ve never seen anything like this on landing missions before. I’ve read of cyborg-type races in some of the scouting books, but none of them were like that,” she finishes lamely, her voice trailing off. “They never…”

“They never ‘assimilated’,” Kirk finishes for her, echoing the words from the recording. He shakes his head and watches the others as they finish their work quickly. “All right, then. Let’s get back to the ship before anything happens to us, too.”

*

McCoy’s unconsciousness is chased away by a nova of pain, echoed by the dull pain he feels in his arms, in his head, and in his blood. There is something nauseatingly wrong, but he can barely focus through the pain. He forces his eyes open and finds that he can’t see from one of them for a few disjointed seconds before the implant responds and the floor below his cheek glows red. He chokes off a yell, and it comes out a strangled, terrified noise. McCoy is even grateful when a hollow laughter echoes through the chamber and drowns out his whimpers.

“Oh, you’ve woken.” The voice is still laughing when it speaks. “Bring him to me.”

The metal floor shakes under a few heavy footsteps: two bodies, both heavier than McCoy and graceless. McCoy anticipates them before he’s hauled up gracelessly to his feet and dragged closer, but it does nothing to prevent the next nauseating wave of pain. His chin lifts, and it’s only when he blinks back the saline in his eyes that he realizes that the alien woman standing in front of him is the one who’s holding his gaze to hers.

“I know everything there is to know about you, Leonard McCoy,” she says in dry, humored tones. Her fingers trace his jaw and stop short of the eyepiece that’s replaced his organic one.

“Great,” McCoy grits out his first word, but his throat is raw and his tongue is uncooperative. “I don’t know a damn thing—”

The alien woman interrupts by tapping the tip of one fingernail sharply to his cheek. “Yes, you do.”

“No, I damn well don’t,” he spits, and though her expression stops him from actually spitting at her, it’s the unsettling sense of half-knowledge that he does recognize her that silences him.

“You were disconnected from the Collective, but you know who I am.” The woman pushes McCoy back into the hands of the figures that pulled him off the floor. “But I did bring you here to talk, so I suppose I can indulge you in the pleasantries of introduction. That’s what people do where you’re from, isn’t it?”

“Stop,” McCoy chokes out hoarsely, jerking in another spasm of pain. He doesn’t need to see her to hear her smile growing on her face, or hear her to understand what she’s saying. Her words, the ones she says aloud to him and whoever else is assembled, are immaterial. The dormant knowing that McCoy feels creeping in his bones and bursting behind his eyes is a greater knowledge that would have knocked him from his feet if he weren’t supported by the drones behind him.

McCoy sees a thousand worlds behind his eyelids where he can’t escape them, the systemic assimilation and annihilation of each species. He’s only mostly sure the burning tightness in his throat is his own screaming. The flood of images, the cruel omnipresence of his view on billions of lives and their individual fates twisting together to form the Collective; McCoy can’t stop it, or fight it, or turn away for a second. It races forward. He sees Depaul, and Talla, and Rodriguez, but also the rest of their team, their flesh greyed and wired, and begins to convulse, free-falling through the history of the Borg. All the knowledge halts with the force of impact and all he sees is her, the alien woman and all that composes her and her history; the Borg Queen.

Everything recedes to the back of McCoy’s mind when he falls forward and dry heaves onto the floor.

“Oh, don’t think that we’re monsters,” the Queen says with a simpering sweetness that sends his stomach rolling again. “We are the Borg. You already know that we are far superior to anything your Federation could summon against our will.” She cups his cheek and laughs when he struggles with the last of his strength. “I wanted to talk to you more than your drones, Doctor Leonard McCoy. You have so much knowledge—I’ve sampled it, of course, but it’s much sweeter to hear it in your voice.”

“I’m not telling you _anything._ ”

“Let me tell you what you can expect, Doctor,” she says and circles around him. “I already have all the knowledge I need from you to break into Federation space and dismantle the Federation’s defenses in less than a minute. I will land on Earth and assimilate everyone you have ever known.” An image of his daughter, Joanna, flickers unpleasantly in his brain, and McCoy shouts. The Queen holds him in the arms of the drones. “Oh, don’t look like that, Doctor McCoy. It’s inevitable. The matter now is only how easy you’re going to make it for me, and whether you will be at my hand during the invasion.”

McCoy thinks that if he were Kirk, he would spit at her again and demand that she kill him first—or maybe Kirk would have a plan to get out of this. McCoy doesn’t, though, and he’s powerless for it.

“I would rather be dead,” he says flatly.

“Fortunately, that is unnecessary,” she says, tapping the tip of her forefinger against her upturned mouth. “I will relish the knowledge that you will command the first wave of drones.” McCoy feels his stomach twist around at her words, but she ignores him, turns, and returns to the console at the head of the room.

Without a word but the implicit command in her stance, the hint of communication McCoy can almost feel, the drones drag his uncooperative body along, holding his arms tightly against every struggle that he pours all his strength into. When that fails, too, McCoy goes limp in their tight grip and pants laboriously for breath. The edges of his vision goes black again, and his throat closes, and when the drones drop him to the floor, he sinks down to it and stares up at them with accusing eyes. They’re not the crewmen he knew aboard the Enterprise, but nor is he the same as he had been before.

His limbs jerk when he tries to push himself up in a final act of rebellion, and when he collapses back down, he almost welcomes the blank non-existence that rises up to meet him.

*

It’s long past the hour Kirk usually finds himself in bed when he looks at the chronometer beside his console. He’s been in his ready room for hours now, turning the information gathered on Betelgeuse 17-B round and round in his head. Spock had been taken aback by the recording on McCoy’s datapadd, but once the information had been exported for analysis, Kirk had been free to remove the device to his own use.

Now he’s still looking at it, though he stopped watching and re-watching the recording over two hours before. The rest of the recording is useless. A few of the planet’s indigenous creatures appear, creeping over the PADD or flying overhead, but Kirk only makes a note to himself to transfer that to the biological sciences division for their studies, but only after McCoy is found. There are no other hidden messages in the bloody fingerprints, no other messages. The most recent files accessed on it are the mission log, the maps Chekov made up for him, and a few personal messages that Kirk won’t open. The one on top is from Joanna, McCoy’s daughter. When Kirk realizes he’s still dwelling on it, the correspondence between McCoy and Chapel about patients, or what words Joanna McCoy might have for her father, he tosses the PADD onto the table in front of his chair and stands up.

The ship is in the depths of gamma shift and the halls are empty when Kirk walks toward his quarters. He’s nearly there when the turbolift opens and Chekov steps off, saluting him firmly.

“Captain,” he says and holds out a datapadd for him to review, which Kirk accepts with an arched eyebrow. “Yeoman Rand is sleeping,” he explains hastily when Kirk gives him a curious look. “Mr. Sulu and I have just finished isolating the subspace signature left behind by _these particular_ ships.”

Kirk is too tired to smile at Chekov’s show of brilliance, so he just scrolls through the readings and nods. “Very good, Mr. Chekov,” he sighs, flicking his finger across the screen to look at a secondary reading, quickly running the calculations in his head. He presses the PADD back into Chekov’s hands. “Have the gamma helm follow the closest of these trails. I assume you’ve—ah, yes, here’s the calculated trajectory for the Enterprise.”

Chekov looks at him with a small, irritated wrinkle between his eyebrows, and Kirk does smile then. “Right,” he laughs quietly. “Of course you did it already. Excellent work, Mr. Chekov, as usual. Deliver the order to the gamma navigator and go to bed. You and Mr. Sulu both. I expect you both on alpha shift.”

“Yes, sir.” Chekov pulls the PADD back against himself and leaves, the stark lighting in the hallway flickering over his hair. Kirk rubs his eyes.

Exhaustion is beginning to wear on him, distorting his senses, and even a few hours of sleep is a welcome respite that he’s needed desperately. He keys in the code to his quarters and steps inside, looking around at the room. He doesn’t often get much time in here, not when there’s a ship to run, and especially not over the last few days. Kirk barely feels alive, but he smiles again when he imagines what McCoy would say to him if he could see him then. Something about killing himself, wearing himself down to nothing, burning both candles. Something like that. He only removes his boots and sets them in the corner, pulling off his uniform and dropping it in a heap beside the bed when he flops down onto the mattress and sleeps heavily.

In what feels like seconds, his alarm blares near his ear, and Kirk looks up at the chronometer with a weak groan. He swears under his breath and pushes himself up from the pillow stained with his drool with another groan. His body is aching, but at least he doesn’t remember whatever dreams he did have.

He showers and dresses, swallows a cup of replicated coffee, and jogs up to the bridge with more apparent energy than he feels. Spock is waiting for him like usual, and Sulu and Chekov arrive from breakfast together, both looking livelier than two men without sleep should look, as far as Kirk is concerned.

“Good morning,” he greets, and looks up at Spock at the science station, who looks back at him with an even stare that Kirk knows to mean is an implicit request. When he stands next to the science console, Spock types a command in and Kirk watches as the greyed figures of Depaul, Rodriguez, and Talla from the recording appear on the screen, then split and isolate.

“I’ve done some research on the transformation the crewmen undertook,” he murmurs quietly to avoid attention from the rest of the crew. Kirk sweeps his eyes around the bridge, but no one is watching them.

“They said they were _borg_. What does that mean?” Kirk shifts his weight from one foot to another and attempts to look casual, though he knows no one would be fooled if anyone were looking. “I’ve never heard of any race that even…”

“Ensign Cassidy was kind enough to share some information she had available to her in the reconnaissance division,” Spock continues. “I combed available databases for words and phrases from the recording and cross-listed those results with physical descriptors.”

“Did anything come up?”

“One entry.” Spock presses a key and Kirk watches as the screen changes, the scans of the images of the three crewmen displayed next to the schematics of an unfamiliar cube-shaped ship. “Under the treaties with the Romulan Star Empire, we have been granted access to their exploration database. They have had seven encounters with the Borg.” His slim, pale fingers move across the screen, pivoting to show the ship to Kirk. “The warp trails we discovered would match those from the Borg ships, though the Romulans never conducted this analysis to track them. It is my understanding of their records that the Empire sought to avoid the Borg at any cost. They described this…”

“Assimilation,” Kirk provides flatly, and Spock nods curtly.

“Assimilation,” he echoes, “is described as the reimagining of biology, changing physiology to improve efficiency, strength, and obedience. Assimilated individuals are absorbed into what the Borg describe as the ‘Collective’. Romulan intelligence knows little of the Borg and their inner workings. It seems difficult to maneuver within their web. The Empire estimates that they have lost some three thousand individuals to the Borg.”

Kirk pushes out a slow breath, closing his eyes. “And you think this is what’s happened to Bon—to McCoy, right?”

“Indubitably.”

“Good work, Mr. Spock.” Kirk doesn’t feel particularly heartened knowing what’s happened. Spock closes out of the display, returning to a series of graphs Kirk recognizes as readings from around them. One of them, a pale green line in the corner, is the measure of the warp signature they’re following to wherever the aliens—the Borg—have taken McCoy and the other crewmen.

Alpha shift is nearly over when the shrieking klaxon on the bridge jolts the crew from the sort of daze that follows after long hours of empty warp.

“Target ships at two o’clock,” Sulu announces in a calm voice, his hands flying over the ship’s controls, anticipating Kirk’s order for a full stop before he can even form them.

“Red alert,” he says, sinking back into his chair and staring at the viewscreen. “Mr. Chekov, shields up. Prepare the weapons crews.” Kirk can feel a grim, tight expression on his face; the one that comes with every battle. He’s lost some of his crew already, and more are going to die if the Borg engages with them.

“Weapons systems ready,” Chekov says within moments, flicking his eyes between his console and the viewscreen, then over to Sulu, working in flawless tandem.

“Ships in range,” Sulu tells them, and Kirk takes in a slow, deep breath.

“On screen,” he says, and watches Uhura’s hands moving, catching radio signals and sparing only a quick look over her shoulder at the screen when the fleet of Borg ships appears in front of them.

“Captain,” Spock says urgently. “Surely you don’t mean—”

Kirk ignores him, scanning the viewscreen for anomalies; things that don’t fit. When he finds what he’s looking for, he stands up and steps down toward the helm. “Uhura,” he says sharply, attracting her attention immediately. “Hail the diamond.”

“Captain,” Spock repeats without moving from behind the science station. “We’re out-numbered here.”

“And it will be a week before we can scramble reinforcements and recover Doctor McCoy and the missing crewmen.” Kirk meets Spock’s eyes and holds his gaze in place until his first officer nods. “Uhura, are they responding to hails?”

“I’m trying all frequencies. I’m not sure they’ve received.” Uhura’s head snaps up and she pulls her headphones away from her ear, wincing in pain. The viewscreen flickers, and a pale face with a merciless smile like a slash fills it. Kirk knows without asking that Uhura didn’t transfer the signal, and he isn’t sure he likes what it means.

“This is Captain James Kirk of the United Federation of Planets,” he announces firmly, and he can see Chekov and Sulu working feverishly at their screens from the corner of his eye.

“I know who you are, Captain Kirk.” The mouth twists around the words, and Kirk forces himself to look at the face—feminine, he decides, and too self-assured and stately for comfort. She doesn’t seem to function like the others he’s seen, or even the figures moving behind her. It’s too independent. “ _We_ are the Borg.”

“You have my CMO and my crewmen,” Kirk snaps impatiently. “We’ve followed your warp signature.”

“We were waiting for you,” she smirks. “You took a terribly long time.”

Kirk stiffens but doesn’t react otherwise, except to solidify his stance and glare up at the viewscreen. “Where is my crew?”

The Queen frowns and steps back from her screen, holding out a hand to her side. Kirk recognizes McCoy’s hand before his slack face appears on the screen next to the Queen, her hands smoothing lewdly over his chest. “Right here, Captain,” she laughs, tipping McCoy’s face up.

His stomach twists in fury and Kirk juts out his chin to hide the wave of nauseous horror that washes through his blood when he sees McCoy, obedient and unresponsive. “Return my crew to me, or you will face the full wrath of the Federation.”

“Oh,” the Queen smirks and pets McCoy’s temple just above the place where wires and tubes encircle his head. “The Federation fleet that’s far and long from here? That would never make it in time to save you or anyone else? Do you think I’m afraid of your Federation, Captain Kirk?”

“Captain,” Uhura warns lowly, but Kirk doesn’t turn to her or anyone else on the bridge. He doesn’t need to look to know that they’re all watching the screen in some mixture of horror and fear, so he forces the shock from his expression and hardens his eyes to marble.

“I don’t need a fleet,” he vows, keeping his gaze on McCoy. He’s barely recognizable; the spark of life in his eyes missing along with the regular tension he’s used to seeing in McCoy.

“You would be mistaken,” the Queen laughs as proximity alarms shriek across the bridge. Kirk looks down at the helm and sees a hailstorm of blasts approaching. The bridge rocks violently, and he grabs Sulu’s chair to steady himself, glaring up at the screen.

“Defensive!” Kirk shouts to Sulu and Chekov, but they’ve already raised the shields to maximum, and Chekov is directing weapons crews and calculating torpedo trajectories with blurred fingers. Uhura cuts the connection and the viewscreen is filled with Borg ships shifting and rotating toward them. Spock’s gaze lifts, his hand held into place on the science station console, and Kirk watches a flash of green shoot from the Enterprise and strike the diamond ship, glowing on the hull and vanishing.

“What was that?” Kirk turns toward Spock, who nods to his console without explanation.

“We are out-numbered, Captain,” he observes again, and Kirk exhales, closing his eyes to drive off the rising frustration.

He opens his eyes and takes stock of their casualties as Chekov rattles off damage reports. “Sulu, pull back into warp. Get us out of here.” The ship jolts into maximum warp, and only when the alarms quiet and he feels like they must surely be a safe distance does he allow himself to sink into his chair and try to make sense of the furious, accented swearing coming from Engineering.

No one on the bridge speaks for a very long moment, until Kirk leans over his communicator and holds down the button to open the link to Engineering. “Engineering report,” he commands, swallowing his nerves and looking down at each of the bridge crew, wishing he could encourage them more than this.

*

When the door to his ready room opens, Kirk doesn’t look up to see who it is. He already knows that it’s Spock before he clears his throat and tucks his hands behind his back, his weight shifting in his boots.

“I have come to apologize for my opaque intentions on the bridge earlier today.” 

Kirk looks up at him and sets aside his glass. He shouldn’t be drinking right now, but it helps to ease his nerves and slow his whirring thoughts into something intelligible. “I’d be satisfied knowing what that shot we fired was. Have a seat, Spock.”

They stare at each other for a moment, and Kirk thinks that Spock will refuse, but when his first officer settles into the chair opposite his own, Kirk relaxes. 

“Mr. Sulu raised a concern during our initial work in tracking the Borg ships, that we were pursuing a specific type of warp trail, rather than a particular ship. Our work then was crude by necessity, but Mr. Scott and I developed a device which could be used to track Borg ships. Specifically, whatever ship seemed prudent. In this case, I chose the ship on which Doctor McCoy is being held. We will be able to follow the signal from the device to whatever destination that particular ship chooses.” Spock looks uncomfortable, but Kirk recognizes the hint of pride in his straight-backed posture. Well-deserved pride, he thinks, and sighs. Spock would have told him if the time had been available, he has to remind himself.

“How do we know the Borg won’t remove the device from their hull?”

“We don’t,” Spock admits in a deadpan. “However, the device is not so easily removed, once discovered. They will have to replace that particular section of the hull in order to remove the affected material. That will allow us some time to regroup and plan for the recovery of Doctor McCoy and the abducted crewmen.”

“We need to anticipate the Borg’s plan and what they intend to do with our crewmen,” Kirk begins quietly and taps his fingers against the arm of his chair. 

“My understanding of Romulan records is that assimilated individuals become part of and serve the Collective. Doctor McCoy’s medical knowledge of Federation, Romulan, and Klingon species may be useful for the care of other Borg drones.”

Kirk holds up a hand and shakes his head, rising from the chair and pacing toward the window. “They know he’s important enough to keep him on hand when we came out of warp and encountered them. They know, because they assimilated him.” He presses his fingers against his eyes and sees the bloom of starry light behind his eyelids when he does. “McCoy is fourth in command on this ship. He’s a mine of Federation secrets.”

Spock frowns and rises to his feet, activating Kirk’s console and typing for a few seconds. “You think the Borg would use this information?”

“Do you think the Borg would have found anything interesting when the assimilated McCoy?” Kirk’s eyebrows are tight together. He knows they would have. McCoy may not have had the same clearance and access to information that Kirk does, but his rank and position afforded him a need-to-know on every crewman’s medical history, including the goals and outcome of the Enterprise’s most classified missions. His blood runs cold when he thinks of all the things McCoy knows that would have been compromised by his assimilation. 

Spock looks up from the console. “Captain.” The word is a quiet summons that Kirk obeys, standing next to him, and his fingers trace the map on the console. There’s a green line on the starmaps that Kirk realizes must be the path of the Queen’s diamond.

“Where would you go if you were the Borg?” Kirk muses aloud, his thumb pressed against the last-known position of the ship received by the Enterprise. “If a Starfleet officer and a handful of crewmen fell into your control, what would you do with them?”

“The apparent purpose of the Borg is to enhance themselves through the diversification of knowledge gained through assimilation,” Spock adds, following his gaze over the screen. 

“Bingo.” Kirk’s expression turns grim. “They’ll be looking to diversify themselves. They’re a conquering race.”

“And you believe Federation space is their goal. Judging by their trajectory, they may be moving toward Andoria—”

“No.” Kirk shakes his head firmly. “Bones—McCoy’s never set foot on Andoria. Crewman Talla is Andorian, but they wouldn’t go there first. It’s too risky. If they attacked Earth and took Starfleet Headquarters and Starbase One…”

Spock’s face hardens with understanding. He’s an intensely logical man, but Kirk is the strategist and while there’s a certain perfection to the internal logic of the Borg, it’s not completely rational. Nor is Kirk, for that matter. “Then the Federation is immediately hobbled. However, Captain, the Borg are not moving in a manner consistent to an impending invasion of the Solar system.”

Kirk nods and pushes his hands into his hair, puffing out a breath. “No, they’re not. We’re a solid two weeks from Earth, but...” Retreating to defend Earth would take too much time, Kirk decides, his eyes moving over the map. 

“Mr. Scott posited that Borg technology may allow them more efficient transwarp travel. We cannot determine what that may be, though, without more evidence.”

“Helpful,” Kirk observes, flickering his eyes up to Spock’s and opening his communications controls. “We need to discuss this all at once.” He opens a commlink to Engineering, then to Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov’s quarters, tersely ordering them up to the ready room. 

Ten minutes later, Scotty is the last to arrive, wiping grease from his hands and taking a seat at the long table Kirk has especially for this purpose. Spock is quietly arranging the display of the map he showed Kirk moments before, and Kirk takes his seat at the end of the table. 

“Mr. Spock and I believe that the Borg—that’s the name of the race we had contact with today—are staging an attack on the Federation, beginning on Earth. Mr. Spock will have already distributed critical information we have available to us, what little there is, on their history, behavior, and what we know.” Kirk leaves McCoy’s fate implied and plows on through his speech. He needs them at their full capacity right now. 

“This is the path of the Borg Queen’s ship,” Spock explains from beside the projection display. “It is not consistent with an attack on Earth, but we cannot preclude that given our limited knowledge of Borg behavior.”

“Then the tracking device has worked?” Scotty asks incredulously. It’s his creation, Kirk expected that it would work when Spock told him about it, but Scotty looks pleasantly triumphant for only a moment before his face sobers. Maybe he’s remembered the reason they needed it in the first place, and the room goes quiet.

Kirk looks around the table and settles on Chekov’s face, which is contorted with concentration. With several years of experience with the younger officer, Kirk knows that it’s probably a good thing. Or a bad thing, if Chekov has found some flaw in their logic and a more suitable explanation. 

“Captain,” he says, and the rest of the table turns their attention to him. Spock examines his own datapadd and makes soft, intrigued noise before modifying the map display above. Chekov looks pleased for a moment, and nods to it, where a range of paths are displayed. “The most likely trajectory, given their speed and current direction, is this one—here.” He points deliberately, and Kirk squints closer at the map. “Which passes directly through a nebula we have not yet fully explored, but is very dense with gas clouds—”

“Which means we’re not familiar with it,” Sulu interrupts while Kirk marvels at their flawless thinking. Sulu seems to have caught on to Chekov’s point a few instants before Kirk. “We can’t stage an attack there—it’s possible they’ll know that space more than the scouting missions the Federation’s sent there.”

“But Chekov has a point,” Kirk says slowly. “If we’re going to recover McCoy, that’s the place and time to do it. They can’t be much better off than we will be with the nebula jamming communication devices.”

“What about the attack on Earth?” Uhura says, sharp on her wits as ever. Kirk smiles grimly.

“Let’s get McCoy back first. He’ll know more about the Borg than we can theorize right now.” The room is quiet again, a sound that Kirk can’t stand right now, but he stares at the table with them before looking up again, meeting each of their eyes. “Scotty, I want you and Spock to work with what information we’ve gotten from the scans of the Borg ships to give us whatever edge you can when we enter that nebula. Sulu, Chekov, work with astrophysics to prepare yourselves for conditions in the nebula. I need you two to be ready for anything.” He hesitates and then nods to Uhura. “I’ll need you with me, Uhura. I’m going to try and track McCoy’s transmitter, if it’s still on him.”

She looks momentarily uncomfortable, and he offers her the warmest smile he can. She’s a linguist, and she’s saved his ass with those skills more times than he’s comfortable trying to count, but he needs her experience with communications and signals equipment while Scotty’s working with Spock. 

“Of course, sir,” she says firmly. Each of them rises from the table, and leaves without a word.

*

McCoy doesn’t remember the struggle for consciousness, only Joanna’s face, her voice, and a now-flawless memory of every word she’s ever written him. When he wakes, he’s already standing alone in the hallway of the diamond, trillions of voices like a tickling whisper somewhere in his mind, and his head splitting open in pain. His breath is ragged and his hands are shaking violently, but he knows—he _knows_ exactly what he needs to do.

There’s a room ahead without anyone in it, and McCoy heads there purposefully, his body feeling off-center and heavy, like an awkward shell he’s trying to shed. When he looks inside, his eyes adjust automatically to the dim light and he sinks onto a nearby bench, his hands fumbling around the back of his head until he finds the metallic device implanted in his skull. A wash of revulsion passes through him, and McCoy draws out the phaser armed on his hip, closing his eyes and moving his hands mechanically over the weapon. He doesn’t know this, he can’t know this, but someone, somewhere, in the Collective—they know, and McCoy silently thanks them for it when he’s drained most of the power out of the energy pack. It’s nearly harmless now.

With one hand on the phaser, he feels for the device on the back of his head again and carefully presses the phaser against it, mumbling quietly under his breath for a moment before he fully recognizes the words to his medical oath, whispered like a prayer. McCoy grits his teeth tighter and positions his finger over the trigger, pushing the rush of images of trillions of assimilations from the Collective out of his mind. They’re not his, he reminds himself fiercely. He’s done no such thing; not yet, he hopes.

“ _I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients,”_ he continues aloud in his own, shaking voice, _“according to my ability and my judgment and never—never do harm to anyone._ ” He inhales, and depresses the trigger on the phaser.

White-hot pain lances through him, not only in his head, but his arms, his chest, and down through his legs. Sparks burst from the implant, and when McCoy forces his eyes open again, he hears nothing but the hum of the ship around him. 

“Jesus Christ,” he groans. Now that he’s properly awake, his head clearing and the persistent whine of the Collective gone, he feels pain acutely. There’s a trickle of blood down the back of his neck, and when McCoy reaches around for it, he finds that his hair is gone, and his skin feels cold. It was almost easier to collect his thoughts in the Collective, he thinks, when the other thoughts—the ones of an individual—were thrust away in favor of strategizing. The first thing he knows is that he doesn’t have much time before his missing presence in the Collective is noticed, and less time still before anyone will find him. 

McCoy forces himself up to his feet, unsettled in his own body, but cognizant enough to understand why; too focused on the consequences of stopping to panic to indulge himself in hysteria. The hallway is still empty, the rest of the ship is preparing for the trip through the transwarp hub and the invasion to follow, but McCoy is quiet as he slips down, suppressing his urge to break into a run. Kirk used to tell him that he never felt pain or panic while he was still in danger, and McCoy had dismissed it immediately as Kirk’s daredevil attitude to the world, but now that he’s here, out of his element and in danger, he finally understands. 

“I’ll have to live long enough to tell him,” he mumbles to himself and stares at the lock on a door—a tertiary communications room that should be deserted. To his relief, his intuition—that which comes from the Collective—is correct and the door opens with ease. McCoy steps inside and locks the door behind him with the access code he used in the medical labs in the Academy, pauses and turns toward the console. The knowledge of what to do comes easily, but it unsettles him and McCoy forces himself to work from two sets of memory: the Collective knowledge how to activate the control board, and his own memories of the Enterprise communications network. 

“McCoy to Enterprise,” he says hoarsely, holding the button down and staring at the blank screen for a long, empty moment. “McCoy to Enterprise, this is urgent.” He hears nothing, only a faint hiss of static, until the screen bursts to life with Uhura’s face, drawn and urgent. 

Her expression changes immediately when she sees him, and McCoy understands why belatedly. Her hand fumbles next to her, her mouth working uselessly for a moment. “Leonard?” she asks finally, her voice low and disbelieving. He hasn’t had occasion to look in a mirror since the encounter on Betelgeuse 17-B. 

“It’s me,” he responds roughly, his voice coming through shaky, but familiar enough that Uhura nods. 

“Captain,” she says firmly, and McCoy watches Kirk’s face appear. His shock is easily swept away, and McCoy smiles at that—grimly, but genuine. 

“Bones.” Kirk’s voice betrays him, and McCoy flinches, turning his attention to the danger at hand. 

“I’m transmitting information from the diamond,” he announces, feeling his voice returning to normal, though his whole body is aching as he searches for the things he knows they’ll need and establishes the transfer. Their faces turn down slightly, and Kirk looks back up at McCoy first.

“Are you all right?” he asks lowly, and Uhura flinches at the intimate tone in Kirk’s voice. “I mean really all right.”

McCoy finishes the transfer and looks up at Kirk’s face, aching a little more than before when he sees the urgency in Kirk’s eyes. “I’m alive,” he promises him, “but I need your help, Jim.”

“Done. We’re coming for you, Bones.” Kirk says, his eyes scrolling through information quickly. McCoy knows he’s already planning there, deciding what their next course of action will be to fulfill his promise. He hesitates again, his movements jerky and exhausted. McCoy knows him too well to ignore the signs; knows that as soon as he’s back on board the Enterprise, he’ll have to force Kirk to take time off to recover, if he still has that authority. 

“Bones,” Kirk murmurs quietly, as though Uhura won’t be able to hear. “Can you fix it?”

“Later, Jim,” he says flatly and scans his face silently. He doesn’t know what he can do about the implants, not until he studies more of the data packet he sent through to the Enterprise. “I can’t stay on long. Look at the information I sent through, it’s _important._ The Borg are advancing toward Earth.” Kirk’s unchanging expression tells him that they’ve already gathered that much information, but his blood is still cold in his veins at the thought that nothing stands in their way but them—an ill-equipped ship and him.

Uhura’s eyes flash and she looks up at him. “They have a transwarp hub?” McCoy nods stiffly.

“Threw you off, didn’t it? The nebula distorts the warp energy from the hub. It was the perfect place to hide it. Their fleet is gathering there for the invasion.”

Kirk seems to be considering for a moment, and then he nods firmly, leaning against the console with sloppy posture. “Take care of yourself until we get there, okay? We’re coming.”

They sever the connection together and McCoy stares at the blank screen a few moments longer, wishing they had established some procedure to the rescue. It’s too dangerous to risk if the Borg can review the transmission, and there’s not much time. He knows that he’ll be found, and they’ll arrive to Earth soon, and _something_ has to be done. McCoy scans the room quickly before gathering a weapon, unlocking the door, and slipping out back into the hallway, phaser in hand. It won’t be long, he promises himself, and nothing will go wrong.

*

“The target ship is approaching.”

The Enterprise is in place when Kirk steps onto the bridge, his eyes trained on the viewscreen. Sulu is monitoring the debris from the nebula, and Spock nods to him from his station. They’ve had less than two days to prepare for the encounter in the nebula, but Kirk is sure that the ship is as ready as it can be against the Borg. McCoy’s information, what Kirk and the others have been able to decipher, suggests that the transwarp hub is the focus of much of their power to travel, surprise, and assimilate mercilessly. 

“Chekov, report on the weapons crews,” he says, and listens to Chekov rattle off their positions and the maneuvers he and Sulu worked out before they arrived in the nebula. Mostly, Kirk is pacing, waiting for the hub to come into sight.

When the first shadow of it appears on the screen, Kirk tenses and slowly lowers himself into his chair. “Stay on defensive.” 

The hub is surrounded by Borg cubes—the beginning of the invasion force intended for the Federation. Kirk ignores the building alarm in his chest; the nagging doubt that this is something beyond his ability and expertise. It is. He knows it is, but that has never been cause to back down before. The Queen’s diamond hovers like a waiting spider in the center, protected by her drones. 

“The tracking device was not disabled,” Spock observes. “Do you think the Borg did not notice?”

Kirk shakes his head minutely. “We can’t assume this isn’t a trap,” he warns, gripping his chair until his knuckles whiten and ache. “Remember, our goal is to engage the diamond, recover Doctor McCoy and the living crewmen, and destroy their transwarp hub.” Theirs is an imperfect plan and Kirk knows it, but he closes his eyes for a moment to envision their retreat. They’re weeks from Earth, and the information McCoy sent indicates that the Borg are even farther from home and without reinforcements until they arrive through the hub. They don’t have a choice but to do this.

“Incoming fire,” Sulu says loudly, snapping the bridge back to focus. Kirk opens his eyes and exhales peacefully.

“Shields, Mr. Chekov.” 

“Fully operational.” The improved shields are Scotty’s innovation, a combination of his ingenuity and Borg weaponry, but Chekov sounds triumphant, even when the bridge quakes from the first volley. 

“Line up your shots with the other ships— _not_ the Queen’s diamond—and don’t fire until my order.” Kirk holds the chair tightly during the second series of blasts, only half-attentive to the damage reports shouted to him from around the bridge. His eyes haven’t moved from the viewscreen and he’s trembling with his adrenaline rush, but Kirk’s voice is clear and loud when he speaks.

“Fire,” he orders, and watches the cold precision of the Enterprise’s weapons, streaking past the Borg blasts and impacting with a satisfying noise. Four of the cubes explode and blow back toward the hub, but only one disappears through. Kirk presumes that they’ve gone to seek reinforcements, but he doesn’t plan to give them that long. “Leave the diamond for negotiations.”

A second and another volley of successful blasts later, Uhura taps at her console and looks up.

“The diamond is hailing us,” she announces with an unpleasant, grim expression, waiting for Kirk’s gesture before she transfers to the viewscreen and turns toward it.

“You think you’re very clever, Captain Kirk.” The Queen appears as though she’s trying to hide her surprised fluster at his unexpected appearance. Kirk isn’t supposed to know about her location, or the hub, that much is plain. “Your inferior race _will_ be assimilated, despite your best efforts.”

Kirk wants to smirk at her, to give away the game, but he tightens his hand into a fist and meets her eyes fearlessly, lacking the trepidation from their first meeting. “Return our crew and I will leave your ship unharmed. Fail to cooperate and I will destroy you and the remainder of your fleet.”

“This is not how a hostage situation works, Captain,” she muses aloud, touching her lips with her fingertips. “You are in no position to make threats while I hold your crew.”

His face tightens. “Fire again.” Sulu and Chekov execute the order immediately, and Kirk is pleased to note from the corner of his eye, the one focusing on the maps and screens in front of them, that they’ve struck the top tip of the ship, far from where McCoy should be. “I’ll repeat—”

Kirk stops abruptly when the Queen steps back and beckons her drones forward and watches in horror as McCoy is dragged on screen, kicking weakly at them—at least he hasn’t been re-assimilated. Kirk is even proud of him. McCoy isn’t particularly notable for his pragmatism, but even Kirk is forced to admire the cold, calculating strategy he would have needed to make it as far as contacting the Enterprise. 

“As I said, Captain,” she says firmly, petting McCoy slowly as he struggles at her feet. “Resistance is futile.”

“The hell it is,” Kirk hears from the connection and actually smirks when he recognizes McCoy’s irritated rumble.

McCoy twists around in the drones’ arms, flailing artlessly until he wrenches himself free, twists around, and yanks a phaser from one of the drones. He twists around and fires into its chest, then the other, and finally aims it directly at the Queen, his face tight and as expressionless as he can make it. Through the connection, even Kirk can see the minute quaking in his extremities. 

“The others are dead, Jim,” he says toward the console, never moving his eyes or the phaser from the Queen. Kirk approaches the helm slowly, and leans toward Chekov and Sulu, speaking in the lowest voice he can manage, his eyes watching the viewscreen intently.

“Sulu, prepare to fire at the hub at my word. I’ll need you to prepare the crews for the assault to follow. We need to stop them, and get away. Chekov, get a lock on Doctor McCoy while we have their coordinates.” Neither reacts visibly, no more than would be expected, but Kirk slowly pulls away and meets the Queen’s suspicious stare with a neutral expression, confident they understand. 

“I want you to know something,” he begins, nodding absently to McCoy. “You picked the wrong CMO to assimilate, and I hope you and your Borg now know that. The wrong ship, the wrong Federation.”

“I know the extent to your weaponry,” the Queen hisses, but the doubt is in her eyes as she winces and touches her head for only a moment. “I know that you don’t have the means to do any such thing.”

“Wrong,” McCoy answers for Kirk, meeting his eyes through the communications link. “Any time now, Jim.”

“You got it, Bones,” Kirk says cheerily. “Sulu, Chekov.”

Later, Kirk decides that missing the flash of light to accompany the wave of energy blowing off the explosion of the hub is worth it to see the Queen’s face when the second volley tears through her ship in the moment McCoy disappears in transport. Chekov doesn’t look up until it’s done, and only then as if to check that his work was successful. Uhura terminates the connection before the final explosion tears through the diamond’s bridge.

“Transport room to bridge.” Kyle’s voice is clear and unwavering from Kirk’s chair. “Doctor McCoy is safely aboard. Standby for medical transfer.”

Kirk looks between Spock and Sulu and calms his rushing nerves, the urge to go immediately and be _certain_ it’s McCoy on his way to medical bay. He sinks into the chair and watches the last of the cubes vanish in the blaze of the hub and breathes in slowly. 

“Set a course for Earth, gentlemen,” he announces with a finality he doesn’t feel, somehow disconnected from the gravity of their victory. “Good work.”

*

McCoy enacts his right to prevent visitors to his bedside for the first sixty-six hours after his return to the Enterprise, barring even Kirk from visiting him. Most of the medical staff follows his wishes, knowing he would see through their attempts to seem courteously concerned about his medical well-being. McCoy doesn’t feel well, though, and he isn’t sure when he will again.

He had to direct the surgery to remove the implants himself, though he’s persistently aware that there are a few that can never be removed properly without some barbaric measure or another. There’s one in his brain that holds all the information from the Collective, which McCoy can ignore most of the time. Other times, it’s like a wide-open door he can’t force closed. His nights are sleepless or riddled with nightmares of assimilation. Sometimes they’re of his assimilation, and other times they’re of the countless others he has now had witness to. His hair is short, but Chapel did what she could with regenerators to encourage it to grow faster. 

Kirk steps into his room on the third day and holds out his hand to prevent McCoy from protesting his presence. They sit in silence for a long time, staring at one another and away most of the time. It isn’t clear if anything is broken. Kirk fulfilled his promise to come for him, so it isn’t as if McCoy can be _angry_ at him. Not really. Not rationally.

“You know,” Kirk begins finally and looks up at him with the same maddening optimism McCoy remembers from the day they met. “While you were out there, when I realized what had happened—”

“I don’t need to hear it, Jim,” McCoy lies flatly, because he’s also not sure he really wants to hear an apology about this. The ugly thought that this might be it, the catalyst for his retirement back to a perfectly normal civilian life, rises again, though McCoy tries to quash it quickly. “It happened. It happens to everyone. Some crew members get their bodies flopped around between the sexes. I got abducted by aliens.” The bitterness in his voice isn’t fair, he tells himself firmly, but he can’t recall the words and unsay them. 

“You were right.” Kirk looks more uncomfortable than ever, and though he knows this is Kirk’s attempt at comfort, McCoy rests his hand over Kirk’s and allows him to finish. Kirk is a captain, but he’s McCoy’s friend right now, and even he can recognize that this is something he needs to say more than McCoy needs to hear it. “All along, you were telling me that I was underestimating the universe and how dangerous it is, and you were right.”

“I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t considering asking for a transfer dirtside so I can…” His voice chokes off and dies, and McCoy forces himself to speak again. “Assimilation is worse than death,” he finally stammers out. “You lose everything about who you are, but you’re still there, suspended with trillions of other voices, and you’re yelling along with them. And when they said they were coming to Earth… Jim, all I could think of was Joanna, and home, and knowing I’d never be able to...”

Kirk shakes his head firmly then and turns his hand in McCoy’s to grip it tightly. “But you did, Bones,” he whispers and reaches out for McCoy’s shoulder, shaking it a little. “You did.”

They don’t find anything significant to talk about after that, but when McCoy’s energy plummets, Kirk stands as if signaled and releases his hands. 

“Get some rest,” he orders softly and even smiles when McCoy glares at him to warn that he knows that _Kirk_ hasn’t been sleeping, either. “We’ll talk about a transfer to Earth when you’re out of medical.” He starts toward the door and hesitates with his fingers resting on the control pad, turning back toward McCoy when he sits up shakily.

“Don’t worry about it,” McCoy assures him, flexing his fingers slowly, dimly aware of the implants left in his body; the scars from living that he’ll never be able to remove. “You need me here.” Kirk’s expression softens as if to tell him that he doesn’t need him like _this_ , and McCoy dismisses it. This is what they need, Kirk and the Enterprise and McCoy himself. 

“I’m staying.”


End file.
